'Love Is Love': Watch This Video of Subway Riders Defending LGBT Rights in the Face of Hatred
How do you react to public acts of homophobia? This is what self-proclaimed “actor/prankster/magician” YouTube-er Julius Dein wanted to find out in his latest candid camera video released earlier this week.
Taking mostly to the London Underground, Dein took on the role of a hate-spewing commuter directing insults at two of his male friends who posed as lovers. Though it may be pretty painful to watch, the results of Dein’s “social experiment” are encouraging.
For the most part, the Londoners caught on camera were outright in their defence of the pretend couple. “I’m getting wound up now, and I’m going to knock you out,” said one burly man, after Dein egged the man on by defending his own bigotry. In response, Dein was told: “People like you make this country look shit.”
It’s worth noting burly man’s comment here, though.
Had Dein really wanted to be thorough in his experiment, he may have tried travelling to less cosmopolitan parts of the UK, where as recent immigrant-fearing Brexit results indicate, bigotry is still alive and well.
That said, apart from one blurred-out homophobe on a bench who noted “they got more rights than we have nowadays”, for the most part Londoners seem to be an outspokenly tolerant group.
One woman even went as far as to say “If these two decide to start banging in front of me, that’s their business.”
Watch the clip in full below.
